zsau@firespeaker.org wrote:

>On Thu, 30 Oct 2003, Lachlan Hunt wrote:
>
>  
>
>>  A datetime element would be useful because it would designate a piece
>>of data as a date and/or time.  Without it, if you encounter a date on a
>>webpage that contains a date like 02/04/03, what does that mean?  2
>>April 2003? 4 February 2003? 03 April 2003?  It's impossible to tell,
>>without looking at the origin of the web page and then figure out "how
>>do they write dates in that country?". [1]
>>    
>>
>
>The kind of person who would write 02/04/03 isn't going to use a datetime
>tag. They're writing 02/04/03 because it takes too long to write 2 April
>2003. If they have _any_ concern for usability, they probably are writing
>somewhere (e.g. a forum) that strips tags _anyway_, so they won't have the
>option.
>
>--
>Tristan.
>  
>
True, but did you notice the NOTE I wrote towards the end of my previous 
post:

> NOTE: I think, Providing a <datetime> tag might
>      start to make authors consider how they are
>      writing dates in their documents, and maybe
>      start avoiding the use of ambiguous formats
>      (eg. 02/04/03). Wouldn't that be Great!!! 


I did realise that some authors are lazy, but my general point for the 
whole post was that it would be extremely useful, in the general case, 
for authors writing dates in documents.

 For example, someone writing a a schedule for an event would probably 
mark up some kind of calendar listing the dates, times and description 
of each activity at the event.  Then visitors to the site (who might be 
from a different country/culture) who recognise dates differently will 
still be able to understand and be able to attend at the correct time.